The Urgency of Care
by Aeanagwen
Summary: The long cough is one of those childhood diseases that everyone gets vaccinated for as a kid, but there are always people who slip through the cracks. Some of them are pretty bad at taking help when it's offered, too. (Post-series sickfic for Yamagi and Chad, with Kudelia and Atra doing what they can to help.)


Yamagi stays in bed until the unseemly hour of eleven AM. Usually he has to be up for work, and the coughing had kept waking him up at Chad's place, so for the first time in months, he allows himself the luxury of sleeping in.

When he finally gets up, he first checks his mail—there's a note from Yukinojo asking him to pick up a new pad for the buffer and to pass his and Merribit's well-wishes along to Chad, and then a few forwarded things from his work address—then makes breakfast, watching the news.

The constitutional convention is in recess for the weekend—its first full recess since it started three weeks ago—meaning lots of chances for reporters to pester the representatives for updates and interviews. They catch Kudelia outside her Admoss office, and Yamagi smiles into his coffee as he watches her give confident but reserved responses to questions about the Chryse delegation's performance and the convention's progress at large before turning the subject to the outbreak.

 _Arbrau has agreed to send another sixty nanomachine healing tanks to Lockyer_ , she announces, and strobing cameras illuminate her in a round of flashing light. _They'll be conveyed by ships with a Gjallarhorn escort. We're expecting them in just over a week._

Sixty. Yamagi sighs as he scrapes the last bit of grits out of his bowl. It's an okay number, but there'd need to be another zero on the end before Chad would even think about taking one.

He shuts the news off and goes to do the dishes.

* * *

He spends longer than he'd like on errands. Washing clothes still takes a round trip to the laundromat and back home, at least until he can afford a car, and while he can fit groceries into the satchels on his motorcycle and then strap the buffer pad to the top, the store and the shop are a good forty-five minutes apart, and then home again to drop all _that_ off. Afterwards, he stops at a hole-in-the-wall place about halfway between his apartment and Chad's—too close to his neighborhood means too far to have to transport food, and too close to Chad's means spending more money than he wants to today—for an early dinner, making quick work of a plate of vegetable stir-fry and ordering a bowl of egg drop soup for take-out.

Chad's apartment building is in one of the renovated parts of downtown, near the heart of the business district, a tall brownstone repurposed from an office building a few years back. The front lobby is always open, sun-warm and decorated with inoffensive wall art and floor rugs, and there is always _someone_ at the desk who wants to make conversation. Yamagi, who got the door code from Chad months ago, uses the side entrance.

He takes the elevator up to the sixth floor, and listens to the sound of his footsteps disappearing in the carpeted floors as he heads to the second-to-last door. The afternoon sunlight shines warm and bright through the high windows lining the hallway's left side, gleaming on the odd painting or potted plant, and the walls muffle the bustle of downtown traffic from outside.

It's the nicest place any of them live, unless Eugene has found someplace really upscale using whatever Kudelia pays him for his bodyguard work. Even Kudelia herself stays mostly at the farm when she can. Of course, they'd basically had to stage an intervention to get Chad to rent the place, after Cucubita confronted Kudelia about the fact that her personal assistant was sleeping in an unused office at Admoss, it never even having occurred to him that he didn't have to live where he worked. Since then, Chad's been gradually filling the place up with all the mundane things you need to live on your own—appliances and furniture, cleaning products and clothes, all sorts of little furnishings and basic supplies.

He hardly ever goes on those shopping trips alone; first Kudelia took him, then Atra and Dante, and Eugene a few times as well, once he realized it made a good guideline for the kinds of things he needed for his _own_ probably-nearly-barren apartment. Yamagi began tagging along not too long after they started dating, and tries to unify the design sensibilities as much as he can—Dante has loud taste, Eugene very erratic, and Chad doesn't usually have a strong enough opinion to override them. As a result, though the floorplan of his apartment is luxuriously spacious compared to the others' homes, the look of the place is a bit of a mishmash.

Yamagi knocks, but doesn't wait for an answer before he heads in. Inside, the lights are off, but the curtains on the big living room window are open, leaving the whole space to fill up with sunlight as it pours through the glass and glows against the back wall of the open kitchen. There's no Chad dozing on the couch—or, of more pressing concern recently, sprawled on the floor—but on the other side of the apartment, the bedroom door is cracked open.

"It's me," Yamagi calls. Indistinct words reply, and something that sounds suspiciously like bedsprings shifting, so he adds, louder, "Don't get up! I'll be back in just a minute!"

The sounds stop—good enough—and Yamagi heads into the kitchen, setting the to-go bag on the counter and pulling out one of the mismatched housewarming bowls out of the cabinet by the refrigerator. In not too long, he has the soup transferred from plastic cup to plastic bowl, and takes it, a glass of tap water, and the takeout utensils gripped carefully between his last two fingers, all to the bedroom, nudging it open with his shoulder.

The curtains in the room are drawn, but the ceiling light is on, revealing Chad sitting in bed, tucked against a nest of pillows with his legs pulled up to his chest, his data slate resting on his raised knees. He got halfway through dressing, it seems, and for a moment, staring at him, the years flense away from Yamagi beneath a whipping sense of déjà vu. Even in the relative bounty of the last few years, Chad never managed to put on much weight, and he's as thin in the face now as he ever was back at CGS. Three weeks into the long cough, he's finally given up on getting dressed in his office clothes every day; his old tank top hangs overlarge around his bony shoulders, and instead of wrinkling good slacks, he's dug up a pair of loose cargo pants. Nothing about him would look out of place squirreled away in a cargo hold or workbay, not his clothes or his gaunt cheeks or his curled-in posture.

 _The socks,_ Yamagi thinks faintly, gaze lingering on the smooth, fine black weave of Chad's good work socks, wearing thin and glossy around his heels. _Those are different._

And then their eyes meet, and Chad smiles, and Yamagi is back in the present. He breathes out and approaches the bed.

"Hey," Chad says, and puts the data slate back in its cradle on his bedside table. His gaze drops down to the dishes in Yamagi's hands, and the smile flickers on his face, slipping lower. His brows knit together over his red-rimmed eyes.

"So I did some reading," Yamagi tells him, a pre-emptive strike, "about what happened yesterday."

The two of them were sitting on the couch together—the contagious period ended a week or so ago—watching some daytime drama and trying to make up explanations and backstories for characters neither of them knew and whom the show itself seemed disinclined to explain. _I think Yven is from Jupiter,_ Yamagi pronounced. _He's running from a small time crime outfit, and that's why the new girl called him a different name—it's his old gang name._

Chad chuckled, the noise faint in his throat, and tipped his head against the back of the couch to look at Yamagi, his eyes gone foggy. Then he opened his mouth and let so much nonsensical gibberish fall out of it that Yamagi, gone stiff and round-eyed with shock, half-expected the hash of sibilants and distorted vowels to materialize on the cushion between them, sprout legs, and skitter off to the nearest dark corner. In a moment that Yamagi ranks as one of the most surreal in his life (right after seeing Yukinojo in wedding formalwear), Chad blinked sleepily at his expression and then asked, slurred but coherent, _Wha's wrong?_

Yamagi shakes off the uncanny memory and goes on, quoting the medical site he'd dug up last night. "'Irregular or incoherent speech.' It's not a symptom of the long cough; it's from the sleep deprivation and malnutrition. I know you can't do much about the sleeping, but you need to be eating more." He holds out the soup.

"I'm trying." Chad takes the bowl with a frown aimed at its rippling surface. He pulls the lap tray, a ridiculous breakfast-in-bed luxury on loan from Merribit, over from where it's tucked against the wall and arranges it over his midsection, setting the soup down on it. "It's just hard to eat anything without setting it off."

"I know." Yamagi sits down in the chair he dragged in from the living room days ago, a cheap metal folding thing that came in a paired set with Chad's small dining table. "But I don't want to come by after work and find you passed out on the floor again."

"I was just napping." Chad attempts a defense, but Yamagi's hard stare quells him, and he leans over the tray, focusing instead the soup. He gets a handful of swallows down, just enough for Yamagi to begin relaxing, before he stiffens and tries to push the bowl away.

Yamagi stands hurriedly and moves the tray to the far side of the bed, leaving Chad free to curl in on himself, forehead pressing to his knees and hands clutching, white-knuckled, at his sheets as the cough starts. It begins as a hoarse, even staccato, but even when he runs out of air it keeps going, a guttural barking that wracks his shoulders with each heaving, empty wheeze. It lasts, and lasts, and lasts, and finally he sucks in a gasp, a sharp, shrill intake of air that breaks the pattern of coughing like a stone disrupting ripples on a lake.

And then it begins again, only with less air to start this time.

Yamagi casts a glance at the data slate, noting the time. He's watched these fits go on for as long as five agonizing minutes, coughing and gasping in cycles of choking breath that leave Chad in a shaking, semi-conscious sprawl when they finally recede.

He presses one hand to Chad's shoulder, open-palmed and supportive, as his other curls into an anxious fist at his side.

This round lasts for about ninety seconds, by Yamagi's rough measure, before Chad slumps back against his stack of pillows and cushions, pillaged from every piece of furniture in the house and a few borrowed ones beside. His breath hisses behind his clenched teeth, sharp inhalations he holds for a three-count before releasing them in deep bursts. The staggered breathing, the pillows, the data slate with its wealth of _anything else_ to concentrate on—they're trying every trick doctors or anecdotal wisdom advise to alleviate the coughing, because there's no cure but two weeks in a healing tank, and with the outbreak, those are in too short a supply to spare.

Kudelia, when she first visited and heard one of the coughing jags, offered to try and find an available tank he could use. Chad, with no hesitation, refused. _It's worse for kids, isn't it? For me it's just going to suck for a few weeks and then I'll get better._

 _But…_ Kudelia, perfectly fearless in the fact of the vaccinations she'd had perfectly on-schedule for her entire life, leaned in closer, one hand resting on Chad's arm.

 _Think of how it would look for someone who works for you to get a tank that some kid could be using instead. That's what you said about the mobile armor, isn't it?_ Chad challenged, and her hand pulled back in surprise. _That you wouldn't take a spot someone else could have, because of how it would look? It's the same thing here. You're so tied up in this right now. You can't risk that over me just having a bad cough for a while._

Kudelia stared at him for a long moment, eyes wet with a too-bright sheen, then nodded, dropping the argument. What was there to say? A passing illness was a passing illness. Kudelia was taking the reins of the long cough crisis so her peers in the Chryse delegation could concentrate on getting a constitution passed for the fledgling Martian Union. It was a reputation-establishing event, make or break, and nothing that even vaguely resembled corruption or cronyism could be allowed to mar her image, for Mars now and the Mars of the future she hoped to shape.

None of that makes watching Chad suffer any easier.

Slowly, Chad's breathing evens back out and he lifts one quivering hand to wipe at his mouth. Then he tips his head back against the pillows and gives the soup a half-lidded, watery stare before closing his eyes and turning his face away.

"Chad," Yamagi sighs, but the quiet chime of the doorbell interrupts the argument before he can even initiate it. Chad smiles, just slightly—he knows it too, and Yamagi throttles the urge to say something sharp. He settles for, "That's probably Kudelia and Atra," leaning over to pull the soup bowl off of its tray and straightening up. He adds, firmly, "I'll heat this back up later."

Chad nods, a shallow dip of his chin, eyes still closed, and Yamagi shakes his head and heads up to the front.

As expected, Kudelia and Atra stand waiting in the hallway outside, Atra in jeans and a single eggshell-blue t-shirt, carrying a basket covered with a napkin, while Kudelia still wears her dressed-for-the-press clothes, a long-sleeved green jacket and ankle-length pencil skirt. She's already slipped out of her shoes, though, Yamagi notes, the pair of heels dangling loose in her hand.

"Sorry for these," Kudelia says, noticing the angle of his gaze. She swings the shoes once. "I've just been wearing them for weeks now. Can we come in?"

Yamagi nods and steps to the side. As he does, he spots one of Chad's neighbors down the hall, a man maybe Merribit's age with a businessman's neat haircut. The man is watching Kudelia's back, brow furrowed, but catches Yamagi's eye and hurriedly turns away, going back to punching in the door code to his own apartment.

"Was he bothering you?" Yamagi asks quietly, once he's closed the door behind the girls. He presses a thumb to the pad beneath the doorknob, listening for the quiet _thunk_ of the deadbolt with one ear.

"The man down the hall?"

"He was just asking about how Kudelia knows Chad, and if he's feeling any better," Atra supplies with an easy, optimistic smile, heading past them and into the apartment's small kitchen to unpack whatever she's brought.

Yamagi's gaze remains on Kudelia, who tilts her head to one side in acceptance of the question. She does _not_ smile, fingers rubbing against the outside of one of her shoes. "He—wondered how someone who can afford to live here could have caught the long cough," she says at last. "He didn't say that exactly, but—I imagine it was something like that."

"Did you tell him anything?" Yamagi frowns.

"It's hardly my place to," she demurs. "Just that Chad is a friend, and that the outbreak is finding its way to many more places than usual this year."

"Mm." Yamagi files away the man's face and apartment number to mention to Chad another time, and changes the subject. "Well. I'm glad you could make it. He's been going kind of stir-crazy without anything to do."

"There's a book in the basket. Some longform poems." Her lips tug up into an uneven smile and she ducks her chin. "I'm not sure he'll get much out of them, but at least they're something different. How did the last story go over?"

Yamagi rolls his eyes, and heads over towards the kitchen to put the soup away. "He thought the main character should have asked more questions."

Kudelia follows him, chuckling, her smile evening out. "He's always very practical about things like that. Is he awake?"

"Uh huh. I'm trying to get him to eat something." He sighs and closes the fridge door, both a little harder than he'd meant to. "The cough's not cooperating and neither is he."

"I brought some more tea and honey." Atra already has a pot of water on to boil, bustling around the kitchen like it's her own. "Some chest salve from Haba, too; she says it helps her husband in the winters."

"Thank her for me," Yamagi says absently, moving over to prop his hip against the counter and investigate the basket. He pulls the napkin off the top and sifts through the contents—jars, sachets, a sheaf of nutrient-supplement packets tied together with a thick length of blue twine, and a flat surface beneath another napkin that he assumes is the book. He slips the twine off the packets and flips through them—protein, vitamins, minerals, the whole batch. "I'll make sure he gets these down, at least."

She nods, brisk and quick, and turns down the heat on the stove. "Yeah. Can we go see him? Kudelia brought a present."

Yamagi turns back to Kudelia and tilts his head. She briefly lifts one finger to her lips. "A surprise. It just got here yesterday."

"…Right. Yeah, you can come see him." He pauses long enough for Kudelia to tug the book out of the basket, then leads them back to the bedroom.

Chad looks over at them when they come in, and smiles, slowly, his eyes not quite focused. "Hey." He tries to sit up straighter, pushing himself farther up against the pillows. "You came by."

"We said we would, silly," Atra says with a tilt of her head and a cheerful smile. Without hesitation, she trots over and takes the chair by the bed. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay. It's just a lot of fuss," Chad answers, and he sounds a little more awake, a little more vital, just by virtue of the company. "How are you two?"

 _Is it lying if you don't think you're doing it?_ Yamagi wonders, not commenting that Chad is _clearly not okay_ , nor on the sting of hurt that pricks him at _a lot of fuss_ before he mentally shoos it away, leaning on the wall and crossing his arms low across his hips.

"Well, I'm all right," Atra volunteers. "Akatsuki too. Everyone at the farm is doing home study right now, so we're learning about different kinds of government."

"Are there a lot of them?" Chad tilts his head.

"Not as many as there used to be before. Right now it's mostly…" She casts her eyes up towards the ceiling, clearly lining the words up in her head. "Parliamentary systems. Jupiter isn't technically autonomous, and Mars is still deciding." She smiles, dimpling her cheeks, at the latter prospect. "But there used to be monarchies—those are run by kings and queens—and dictatorships where whoever's strongest is on top, and democracies and oligarchies and all kinds of things."

"Kings…" Chad murmurs, and Yamagi can see his eyes start to lose focus in that way that happens when he's starting to think about something else, something from Before. But before Yamagi needs to step in and say something, Chad blinks himself out of it. "What _is_ Mars deciding?" he asks, looking up at Kudelia, who's stepped up behind Atra.

"Still undecided," she answers dryly, "like I'm sure they're saying on the news." She drums her fingers lightly on the chair. "Other than the oppression from the Earth, the colonies don't necessarily have a lot in common—they're all founded by different blocs, after all. Everyone's very concerned about keeping their autonomy. I don't know if anyone will accept something like a president from another colony. For now, I think we'll have to settle for a confederation. As forms of government go, they're not bad. And they do tend to get more unified over time."

Chad's eyebrows raise and he blinks once, then looks between the two of them. "Are you guys reading all this somewhere?"

"They let you have access to more history books when you wind up in the government," Atra boasts, straightening and sticking out her chest with exaggerated pride. She grins over her shoulder up at Kudelia, whose cheeks flush pink.

"Well—yes."

"Can you share it? I've been looking for more to read." Chad looks up at his data slate, then back down, his smile self-deprecating. "I feel like I've been getting dumber just laying in bed."

"That's the sleep deprivation, not your brain going bad," Yamagi tells him. Chad had been trying to do office work from home, overflow accounting from Dexter to help out and keep busy, but eventually the errors piled up enough that Dexter stopped sending it, telling him to rest instead. He probably meant well. Yamagi may yet give the man a piece of his mind next time they meet, though.

"Actually," Kudelia says, and holds the book out, "I brought this. I don't know if you'll like it or not, but it might be a little easier on your eyes than the screen."

Chad's eyes widen as he takes the book. "Are you sure?" He doesn't yet let it come to rest on the sheets—though by the way his arms tremble, droop, and re-steady, he's having to try pretty hard not to. "Real books like this are so rare."

"Just think of it as a loan," she assures him warmly. "And you'll probably want a dictionary around—I need one sometimes, when I'm reading old works like those. Oh, and I have this, too!" Out of one of her coat pockets, she pulls a small square package, no wider than her hand. The bedroom light catches and shines on its pale blue wrapping like the sun's reflection in a puddle—at a glance, Yamagi is certain it's the most expensive paper he's ever seen—and Chad's eyes go huge. His arms slump, dropping with the book into his lap, and he looks around rapidly in a way that could mean he's looking for somewhere to put the book, or could mean he's looking for an escape route.

"It's from Takaki," Kudelia says gently, and Chad goes still, looking back around at her. "It came in today. All the way from Earth."

"Shipping from there's so much money…" Chad's words spill out in a slurred mumble, auto-pilot dialogue. After a moment, he leans over and takes the box from Kudelia, then settles back in the bed, turning the little package over and over in his hands. "He didn't have to do this."

"Mm." Kudelia's faint hum, mild and noncommittal, takes Chad's objections and sets them neatly aside, an unopened package that everyone can come back to another time, maybe, but for now, lets concentrate on this instead. Yamagi could almost hug her, especially for not pointing out that that Takaki has an employer who was probably more than happy to facilitate the transport. "He says he hopes you enjoy them, and that you feel better soon."

"Open it!" Atra enthuses, leaning forward. Her feet rock back and forth on the floor—she's gotten too tall to swing them freely beneath her chair like a girl anymore, but she's as physically expressive as ever. "I've been dying to see all day."

With fingers made thin and fumbling by illness, Chad obeys. He peels the paper back slowly, careful with the corners and wincing slightly at every faint tear or rip, but asking for no help. Finally, he spreads the paper out flat and pulls the lid off the box within. Not having a good angle to peer at the box's contents, Yamagi instead watches Chad's expression, as it shifts from focused attention to confusion, going through recognition, surprise, and finally landing on something like recognition again before he laughs, bewildered and pleased.

He lifts up the gift. Yamagi squints at it as Atra stands up for a closer look, and Kudelia raises herself up on tiptoe to peer over her wife's shoulder. Stamped on the front of clear plastic is a pattern of red and white scalloping, a name in cursive Yamagi can't read from a distance, and a picture of—some kind of dessert biscuit, a soft yellow cookie and a thick layer of what Yamagi knows to be chocolate thanks to every Teiwaz gathering he's ever even tangentially attended having platters-full of pastries dunked or painted in the stuff.

"It's food," Chad explains, lowering the package again once everyone's finished staring at it. "From Edmonton. They had a big plate of them at Mr. Makanai's celebration dinner. I—uh." He ducks his head, and runs his hand over his hair, and it's such a Chad gesture that Yamagi kind of wants to hug Takaki then and there, too. Chad's even still smiling. "One of the staff saw me staring at them when they were cleaning off the tables at the end of the night and packed me up a few extra. And then Takaki found them at this corner store by his apartment. Right up on the top shelf, where all the expensive things were. I only ever bought a package for myself once—I was always so busy. But they were—I guess they were my favorite food?"

He delivers the words like a revelation, like something he's heard people talk about for years just clicked in his head, with an abashed laugh and a wide smile like Yamagi hasn't seen on that face since he asked about Chad's birthday a few months after they started dating.

Atra laughs as well, clapping her hands together. "Try one!" Almost immediately, she amends, "I mean, if you want to open them now. I understand if you'd rather save them."

But Chad shakes his head, still smiling. "I don't mind. You guys should try them too."

"We were all there at that dinner," Yamagi reminds him with a soft huff of laughter. "They're for you. And when are you ever going to get a chance to have them again? You keep them."

Luxury Earth food turns out to be a pain to get into. There's a ribbon keeping the package shut, and then a rubber band under that, and then the whole thing is in a ribbed paper cup inside a sealed plastic bag, at which point Yamagi goes and fetches the scissors. But they get them open at last, and though it's faint, he can smell the buttery richness of the cookies as Chad pulls one out.

He flashes it around to the room so everyone can see the logo emblem pressed into the chocolate, then bows his head over it to take a bite.

"Still delicious," he says after he chews and swallows. He makes it through about half of the thing before the cough rises up out of his lungs like a debtor, wrenching his shoulders into a rigid curve and doubling him over in place. Kudelia presses her hand over her mouth in distress, and Atra mewls in empathetic pain, sitting on the bed next to him and tucking herself up against his side in support.

"Yeah. Still delicious," Chad manages to repeat when he can finally breathe again, six horrible rounds of coughing and gasping later, and smiles up at them, a few tracks of labored tears gleaming on his face.

The girls stay and talk for another hour or so, Atra popping off to the kitchen to make tea while Kudelia and Chad discuss office work and the former's schedule. They turn to other topics when Atra returns with a licorice root blend thick and sweet with honey, which they all sip their way through at a lingering pace as they talk, save Chad, who at Atra's instruction tries to drain his in a series of long swallows, punctuated by coughing fits. Yamagi, who has been keeping a towel on hand for exactly this sort of thing, steps between the girls and Chad to block their view as he coughs so hard and long it leaves trails of spittle down his chin from the open rictus of his mouth. Yamagi passes the half-empty cup back to Atra without looking, or commenting on the way her fingers linger and tighten on his hand when she takes the tea from him. As the coughing fit eases, he passes the towel lightly over Chad's face, then his phlegm-flecked hands, gaze fixed anywhere but on his dark, pained eyes.

When the paroxysm passes, he slumps back and looks to Kudelia, eyes taking a moment to focus on her. As she opens her mouth, he shakes his head once and forces a smile. Still faint-voiced from lack of air, he chokes out, "Sorry. What were you saying about Lockyer's rep?"

After a moment of holding his stare, her tense posture eases and she picks up the thread of the conversation like the most masterful seamstress in the solar system.

Finally, with the clear light through the curtains burning away to orange, and Chad losing more words than he can find, both she and Atra take a turn leaning over to gently hug him and say their goodnights.

"I know resting is hard when there's so much you want to do," Kudelia whispers. "But try to keep your strength up. I can't wait to see you back at the office when this is all finally done."

He nods, resting one hand over her back with a faint blush coloring his gaunt cheeks. "Thank you for the book," he answers, his voice also pitched low. "I… Good luck with everything—the—the thing." His brow furrows, and he's silent for a moment, then huffs weakly in frustration. "The government thing."

She straightens up, though her hand strays up to rest on his where it sits awkwardly on her arm. "The convention?"

He nods again, looking relieved. "Yeah. The convention. Good luck."

"I'll make sure to bring everyone a good result." She smiles, confident and serene. "Good night, Chad. Feel better soon."

"Mm. I'll do my best. Good night, Atra." The last part comes out a bit muffled as Atra jumps in to hug him in Kudelia's place, a little tighter, a little more familiar.

"I hope you feel better really soon!" she says, voice wobbling. "Try to eat and drink as much as you can, okay?"

He hugs her back, arms a loose circle, and hums assent. "I'll do my best," he repeats, then pulls back to give her a serious look. "Stay healthy. You and everyone else."

She nods rapidly, and grips one of his hands in hers, giving it a tight squeeze. "We will. I hope you get some rest tonight."

Me too," Chad sighs.

"I'll come visit again next weekend—and maybe I'll drop by during the week, if I can?"

"Don't leave anything too important," Chad says, and Yamagi, standing at the doorway, clips back a pinched exhale. "I'll be fine before too long."

"I know," Atra answers, her voice now sure and strong, "but you're important too, so I'll be back by."

Chad pauses, then tries to smile, face turned down towards his hands on the bed. "Right."

He doesn't look up as the two of them wave and back towards the door.

Yamagi follows them out of the room, pulling the door just to the edge of the frame as he exits. In the living room, Kudelia and Atra take the couch, Atra leaning into Kudelia's shoulder, her face drawn. Kudelia loops her arms around Atra's waist, knitted fingers resting on her hip. Yamagi drops down into the other dining table chair, pushing back his hair.

"How's everyone at the farm?" he asks, voice low. "Any cases there?"

"Nothing so far." Atra sighs, her eyes glassy— _probably running herself harder than anyone,_ Yamagi thinks. "We get the vaccinations for everyone unless Doctor Merrin tells us not to. And all the employees have to stay up to date. We're practically in quarantine right now, for who we let in and out."

Kudelia chances a rueful smile. "Anyone who has to stay for more than half an hour, they make change clothes. They're being very careful."

Yamagi nods understanding. The first night he went home—he dropped by to bring Chad dinner, and not ten minutes in, Chad doubled over coughing, with him, Yamagi, and the sandwiches all winding up on the floor. Is was _not_ just a normal cold after all, apparently. Yamagi didn't go home that night or well into the next day, but when he finally did, he stripped out of everything, shoved all the clothes into a bag, and stood underneath a scalding hot shower until the water ran cold.

 _He didn't get vaccinated because he was Human Debris_ , he thought, as water dribbled and snaked down his scalp and over his shoulders _. He got the cold visiting Ride's group. Orphans and street-rats—how many orphans and street-rats work at the factory? Has Revi had her shot for the long cough yet? Did Dane ever?_ The thought of those sharp breaths knifing through Revi's tiny frame, of that awful convulsive hacking booming in Dane's broad chest, tearing muscles and cracking ribs, wrung cold shudders out of him even in the clinging steam.

"The old man's shut down the factory until the convention's over. Everyone's on half-pay until then," he says, pulling his knees up into the chair. "He doesn't want the long cough getting around there, not with Revi getting into everything."

"She's at that age," Atra says with a sympathetic nod. "Wants to put everything she can find in her mouth."

"Right. But we're not getting much business right now anyway. And what we _are_ getting, he doesn't like."

"What do you mean?" Kudelia tilts her head.

Yamagi shrugs. "I don't know how much time you have to read the news right now, but a lot of people think the Union won't last—maybe not even long enough to get a constitution written. They want to be ready if fighting starts."

"Weapon stockpiling," Kudelia says, her eyes widening. When Yamagi nods confirmation, she pulls one hand free, pressing a knuckle to her lips, her brows knotting together.

"Mostly mobile workers from us," he elaborates. "But all ones with weapon mounts. And we've had a few people ask about mobile suit parts, too."

"Do you keep track of what they're buying?" she asks suddenly.

"Obviously, for inventory."

"But do you keep individual records?" she presses. Atra straightens up to look at her.

"Until warrantees run out, yeah. Why?" He drops his chin on his folded arms, watching the two of them.

"It's just…" She trails off, her eyes gone narrow with thought. "If there are people waiting for a war to start, then there are people _wanting_ for a war to start. I don't want the Dort Uprisings happening here."

"…Didn't most of the weapons for that come from Teiwaz?" Yamagi asks, hearing the flatness in his own voice. "What does their boss think of all this?"

That gives her pause, and he watches her wrestle with how much to say. Tekkadan—well, Tekkadan doesn't exist, and even if they did, they wouldn't be privy to internal Saisei politics anymore. Chad's said as much before, when he's had to arrange some of Kudelia's more private _long_ -long-distance calls.

"If the Martian Union can stand up as an independent entity, it points the way forward for Jupiter as well," she says finally. "I'm sure he has people watching this very closely."

"Has Mr. Makanai said anything? He likes us, but it's people on Earth who want to see the Union fail more than anyone."

Already, Yukinojo is having trouble with some parts sourcing, thanks to the interruptions in trade during the convention—no one can fully broker deals with Martian companies when no one's quite sure what things like tariffs are going to look like a month down the line. And the economic blocs' stinginess with medical supplies for the outbreak has been all over the news—the interplanetary news programs trying to spin it as best they can while the new local networks savage it six ways from the sun.

"He's concentrating on the vaccine shortage," Kudelia says, echoing Yamagi's thoughts. "I think—" she flashes another uneven smile "—I think he's actually fairly worried about Chad. It must have never even occurred to him that Chad could catch something like this."

Yamagi scowls. "I'm glad he's thinking about him like a real person now, then," he says, sharp words directed at everyone and no one— _none_ of them had thought about Chad or Ride or Dane or any of them catching something like this, even Yamagi himself.

"It's not like that," Kudelia soothes. "It's put a face on the issue for him, that's all."

"Dante's really worried too," Atra pipes up, pulling Kudelia's free hand back down into their laps. "Derma says to tell Chad he's sorry for not visiting more."

Yamagi says nothing, just hums in his throat, a single unconvinced sound. He was there when Dante and Derma came the first time, Dante all rough good cheer and teasing encouragement. He watched the blood drain out of Dante's face when one of the paroxysms hit, each high gasp triggering another bout, until Chad slumped down against him, half-conscious from the lack of air.

Derma has been back since. Dante has not. And Yamagi knows why—or at least, he can guess—but all the same, he finds it a bit selfish.

"It's fine," he says at length. "Chad's…" He pauses, hesitant to breach a teammate's privacy. "He's the last one of their group left."

"Akihiro…" Atra murmurs, shoulders drooping, then blinks when Yamagi shakes his head.

"I mean the _whole_ group. Not just Akihiro." As they go on looking at him expectantly, Yamagi sighs, picking his next words as carefully as he would footsteps through a minefield. "Maruba—the old owner—he didn't make a habit of buying Human Debris. He got—offered a deal once. A 'bargain price'. For a bunch of them at once." His lips twist in distaste. "Like you'd get supplies wholesale."

 _And then he just complained about them all the time because he had to teach them twice as much and they were sick all the time. The only time he ever gave one of us medicine when we were sick was because you can't fire Human Debris and he didn't want to waste the investment. And even then it was too little too late._

 _I hope he_ never _makes it out of that mining colony Mr. Naze dumped him in._

"Chad and Dante are the last ones," he finishes.

The girls sit in silence for a moment, Kudelia staring down at her lap with knitted brows, lips hooked into a harsh twist, while Atra clenches her hands in her shirt and stares out the window with grief-darkened eyes.

"I never knew that…" she mutters, gaze falling.

Yamagi offers her a small shrug and a quiet reply. "You didn't work with us back then. You couldn't have known."

She frowns, dissatisfied, and then, without preamble, stands up. Kudelia, her arms suddenly empty, starts out of her thoughts and looks up at her wife. Before either of them speak, another coughing fit starts in the back room. For several awful moments, no one says anything, three heads turned towards the bedroom, Yamagi rising to his feet but stopping after no more than half a step. The racked sounds pile up in the apartment, clawing up the walls, as impossible to ignore as their source is to breathe through. Yamagi's stomach clenches, listening to them.

 _And his neighbors just want to complain. How dare that street trash disease bother them here?_ A penetrating chill of fury seeps through him like water suffusing cloth at the thought.

When the coughing finally trails off, all three of them release a sigh, and Atra turns her attention back to Yamagi.

"We should get back," she says, apologetic. "I'll talk to Dante."

Yamagi tries to shake off his anger as he turns back to her and Kudelia. "You don't have to. I think he and Chad understand each other."

 _He's gonna be okay, right?_ After his visit, Dante leaned against the outside wall of the apartment, arms tucked across his chest. Yamagi's spent years watching the stillness and movement of machinery parts, so spotting the fine tremor in Dante's hands presented no real challenge, no matter how much Dante tried to hide it with balled fists. _This doesn't kill people our age; that's what the news was saying._

 _He'll be fine,_ Yamagi told him then, and he repeats it to himself now, trying to tune out the edges of ragged gasping he can still hear from the bedroom. _Everything's going to be fine._

"Still," Atra responds, and leaves it at that. _Still._ There's no arguing with non-statements like that, especially coming from women like Atra.

"Tell him to write more if he doesn't want to visit," Yamagi compromises. "That way it doesn't have to be awkward for either of them."

"Should I do the same?" Kudelia asks, finally standing up, still looking towards the back.

"He likes it when you call in the evening," Yamagi answers. "You should concentrate on the convention, though. That's the most important thing."

"Most important doesn't mean we shouldn't make a little time for less important, though." She looks at him with a rueful smile. "Thank you for taking such good care of him."

 _He hardly lets me do anything._ Yamagi looks away, unable to voice the thought in the face of Kudelia's earnestness. After a moment, he nods.

Atra steps over to hug him, and Kudelia lingers long enough to take and squeeze his hand. He permits both of these, then walks them out, agreeing to keep in touch about another visit. When they're gone, he closes and re-locks the door before leaning against it to release a long sigh.

 _I wonder if he'll let me stay tonight,_ he thinks, turning his gaze to the window. turning his gaze to the window and what he can see of the city beyond, the downtown high-rises drawing long, dark shadows across the living room floor.

Another night of little sleep and Chad resisting every effort to help except when he's too exhausted to even try—and by that point, Yamagi himself will likewise be so tired and so frustrated that he'll barely have it in him either.

 _But if I go home I'll just stare at the ceiling all night thinking about him being here alone. Or about whether Trow and Embi have had the sense to tell Ride to stay off-planet for now, and how Ride's too_ stupid _to listen._

The frustration builds—Chad's issues, the bullheadedness of Ride and his group, the callousness of people all the way from Earth to right next door—and Yamagi tips back his head, trying to breathe it all in and out and away.

After the fourth long breath, he straightens up and heads to the kitchen to grab the chest rub out of Atra's basket.

By the time he gets back to the bedroom, Chad's shifted positions again, lying on his side half-curled around a pillow, his eyes foggy and half-shut. He breathes evenly but shallowly, open-mouthed, the air whispering past chapped lips. _Ointment,_ Yamagi thinks, filing it with his ongoing mental list of groceries and supplies, _for the dehydration. He's getting dry all over._

Chad doesn't focus on him again until he sits down on the side of the bed, opening the small jar. The sharp, cold tang of menthol hits his nose near-instantly, making his eyes water at the strength of it. He puts the lid down on top of the book.

"What is that?" Chad shifts his head against the pillow, though he doesn't try to sit up. "Smells nice."

"Atra's old boss sent it. It's a chest rub—supposed to help with coughs." He turns the jar so Chad can see the opaque white cream inside.

"A—chest rub?"

"Mm-hm." Yamagi turns the jar around in his hands, looking for instructions, but the glass is unlabeled, probably homemade. "I guess you just rub it on."

"Is that how it works?" Chad asks.

He sounds exactly as bemused by it as Yamagi feels, drawing a smile out of him even as he takes a low, short breath, readying himself for another debate.

"I guess." He glances at the shaded bedroom window for effect, though the lighting hasn't changed all that much from earlier—it's not even quite dark enough for the street lights to be on yet. "You want to try some before bed?"

"Bedtime already?" Chad sighs. He shoots a glance at the book Kudelia brought, now resting on the chair by the bed.

"You'll get more out of the book if you get some sleep first," Yamagi points out. "And I don't think you're planning on eating anymore today, are you?"

Chad makes a face, scrunching up his nose and closing one eye. "I'd rather not. I know you want me to, but…"

"How about this," Yamagi proposes, and holds up the jar between them. "You let me put this on you, and try to get some sleep, and I won't pester you about eating anymore until morning."

"You don't have to do that," comes the answer, as predictable as _fucking_ clockwork. Yamagi grits his teeth, gripping the jar harder. "I can just put it on myself later—"

"Chad!" Both their shoulders tense up at the barked name. "Just _let me take care of you._ " The rest of the words rattle out like dropped nails. Yamagi presses his lips together, looking down. Even to his own ears, the words sound like an order, a command, when they're anything but. The memory of Shino's hand rough on his brow weighs so heavily that Yamagi aches to lift his own hand to his forehead and scrub the feeling away like a picture drawn on a dusty window.

The seconds tick by between them, the sense of Chad's eyes on him no less weighty. Finally, rather than saying anything, Chad breathes out, a shallow, uneven sigh. He slides his hand over towards Yamagi, who switches the salve into his left hand and curls his right around Chad's outstretched fingers.

"I don't know how to," Chad says, and when Yamagi looks back at him, he finds a troubled line on Chad's brow and a soft frown tugging down at the corners of his mouth. "I just—I don't know how to do that." He curls further in on himself and pulls Yamagi's hand nearer, resting his forehead against it, blinking slow and weary.

Yamagi breathes—breathes and closes his eyes on the prickling of frustrated tears. He squeezes Chad's fingers tighter.

"Stop trying so hard," he manages after another moment stifles him with all the many things he _could_ say. "You're important to me, so let me make things easier for you sometimes. You don't always have to take every bit of burden you can carry—let me take some too."

He leaves the salve in his lap to reach over and smooth his hand over Chad's hair. "Just—let me trouble myself some over you. I promise I'm not going to get rid of you because you're inconvenient sometimes. _Human beings_ are inconvenient sometimes."

Chad winces at the last sentence, and swallows. He opens his mouth, but closes it again, hanging onto to Yamagi's hand like at any second he could be torn away.

 _I love you._ Yamagi rolls the words over in his head, testing the shape of them, the electric charge of them humming against his teeth.

 _No,_ he decides. _I'm not saying that. Still not ready for it._

He holds Chad's hand, and waits.

Finally, Chad nods, an increment so narrow that it barely even shifts his hair. He hums indistinctly in his throat, more of a whimper than an assent. Then he sighs, a gusty burst of frustration, and opens his eyes to look up at Yamagi, a pained smile tugging over his mouth.

"Sorry. That was really pathetic. I—I guess letting you put that stuff on is an okay place to start?"

Yamagi breathes out in relief, and nods, squeezing his hand once. "Yeah. We might as well start there."

Chad nods again, more readily this time, and the tension in his hand eases. "What should I do?"

"Mm. Just lay however you've found you can breathe easiest. Face up." Yamagi scoots closer to him, tucking one leg under himself, and as Chad slowly elbows himself over onto his back, reaches over to begin unbuttoning his shirt.

They spend the next few minutes in silence, Chad with his eyes closed, breathing in the smell of the mixture as Yamagi rubs it over his upper chest and collarbone in careful, circling motions. Blissfully, the cough stays at bay— _I'll believe it when it stays gone after he's dropped off_ , Yamagi thinks, but allows himself to once more begin to relax.

"You know…"

Yamagi pauses at Chad's low murmur, bracing himself for—who knows what? A confession? An admission? A string of sleep-deprived nonsense?

"…Yeah?"

"I think you should eat some of that soup too." Chad opens his eyes to give Yamagi a solemn stare. "You've been getting thinner, you know."

Yamagi stops completely, staring back at him in disbelief—but this is Chad through-and-through, responsible, observant, and so very practical, and so Yamagi just snorts back a laugh, shaking his head and returning to his ministrations even as he feels a grin betraying him.

"I'll eat it if you will," he says, and rolls his eyes affectionately at the dip of Chad's chin above him.

"Deal."

END

* * *

NOTES:

o What does disease prevention even look like when the existence of Human Debris means that a portion of the most at-risk population has no protections under the law? It looks like public health crisis waiting to happen, that's what.

o The long cough is more-or-less based on pertussis/the whooping cough, called the 100-days cough in Japan for its extreme duration.

o Thanks to my usual beta suspects, as well as effectaffect for showing me that someone (anyone) else in this fandom ships Chad and Yamagi, my favorite post-series rarepair of all time.


End file.
